Sections Above and Below This Page:

were trailing behind, scooped up the woman and hustled her
across the street into a waiting car.

The newscaster's blow was slight but it was plain to see that
the blatant audacity of it outraged Huey P. and he dropped the
magazine and belted-the newscaster square in his mealy face,
knocking him flat up against the wall which rebounded him into
his cameraman. All the cops tensed up and their hands began
fidgeting around the butts of their holstered pistols, and Bobby
Seale motioned to his brothers that the time seemed appropriate
to split. But Huey P. didn't think so and he stood out in front
of the others, pointing at the dazed newscaster and shouting for
the cops to "Arrest that man! He assaulted me 'n I want
you to arrest him! Go on, arrest him GODDAMMIT!" The
cops all began flipping the straps off the hammers of their
.38's, and Huey P. jacked a shell into the chamber of his shotgun
and ordered his brothers to "Spread out!" behind
him, and they did, facing the cops with their M-l's gripped tight
in both hands and angled toward the sky.

It looked like it was all going to blow any second, and Emmett
moved off the sidewalk into the street, positioning himself for
cover out of the line of fire a hundred feet away on the other
side of the row of parked cars. Just then, a fat, chunky cop
started coming forward yelling, "Don't point that shotgun
at me! Stop pointing it at me, I tell ya!" The traffic
coming from and going to the Bay bridge was bottled up at the
freeway ramp behind Emmett, and the copper's screaming had all
the people in the cars staring with their mouths open wide in
utter disbelief at the showdown occurring only a short distance
away from them.

There were about thirty cops all crowded together on the
sidewalk now, and the chunky one kept hollering and making
threatening motions towards his pistol, and Huey P. held his
ground in front of him with his shotgun tilted, ready for action.
He wasn't going to let that fat cop bully his way any closer and
he started challenging him to remove his gun from his holster. "Go
on, you big fat racist pig, draw your gun! You goddamn coward! Go
on, I'm waitin'!" The fat cop froze, startled at being
called. The other cops began moving away from him out of the line
of fire, and when he saw that, he sort of sighed, hung his head
low and gave up. Huey P. Newton laughed in his face.

All of a sudden, one of the black guys who walked over to the
car with the woman and the other two, came running across the
street [end page 307]